November 28, 2005

The theme in Adam Cohen's Tuesday NYT tickled me because it included FLY ROBIN FLY. The lyrics are as follows: Fly, robin, fly. Fly, robin, fly. Fly, robin, fly. Up, up to the sky. (Repeat while disco dancing.) The puzzle's also a pangram, and it's stuffed to the gills with perky fill like ASHCAN, ROYKO, JUNGLES, SYLPH, ALOHA STATE, RISOTTO, and BAZAAR.

I also dug Lynn Lempel's "All-Inclusive" puzzle in the Sun, particularly STALLONES THROW, "Rocky ceremonial start to a baseball game?" The fill tended toward name-calling, with YES MAN, MEANIE, NEATNIK, and SCROOGES. I would've liked to see MINEO and DEAN cross-referenced as Rebel Without a Cause costars (rather than DEAN being "college admissions bigwig"). How many of you actually try to picture a map when you come across a clue like "Yonkers-to-Stamford dir." and how many of you just wait to see if it turns out to be ENE, ESE, SSE, or NNE? I generally wait for the crossings to reveal the answer, personally.